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    Plan détaillé Texte intégral How computation is given to us Our Computational Being Etho-Analytical Point of View Conclusion Notes de bas de page Auteur

    The Digital Subject

    Ce livre est recensé par

    Précédent Suivant
    Table des matières

    Computation and Subjectivity

    Jean-Michel Salanskis

    Traduit par Sara Heft

    p. 74-90

    Texte intégral How computation is given to us Our Computational Being Etho-Analytical Point of View Conclusion Notes de bas de page Auteur

    Texte intégral

    1 In what follows, I would like to attempt a phenomenological evaluation of the “information revolution”, and how it concerns subjects or provides new avenues for their experiences. To this end, I will combine classical phenomenological sources with a different and alternative phenomenological source, which may no longer be one: etho-analysis, which I am seeking to promote.

    How computation is given to us

    2Thus, to start off, I wish to identify what has recently come to dominate the world and constrain it to its form or system. I call it computation—in this way seeking to simultaneously express the system of calculation and the objective form of the structure.

    3I believe that everyone grasps the importance of the system of calculation when it comes to this matter. In a sense, we understand that it all arises from a small group of logician-mathematicians who clarified the concept of effective calculability in the 1930s (including Turing, Church, Gödel, Von Neumann). We are aware that they defined the theoretical languages able to record and identify all procedures worthy of the name calculation, and giving rise to perfectly explicit operating paths. These languages, which are already “programming” tools, if we will, in truth point out what a calculation is according to highly varied perspectives. Turing describes a symbol of a certain state falling into one square along an infinite strip of tape; the bearer of this symbol continually undertakes the act of acceding to the targeted square, moving along the tape and changing states. Church views a calculation as the application of a series of gestures of substitution in a symbolic assembly, until a generally irreducible state is reached. Kleene and Gödel view calculations as acting on lists of whole numbers, and explain how to produce their actions based on a few simple functions, using rules of conception. Although the public at large is unaware of these basic contributions, we are aware that the abstract model of the computer, which we know and use today, comes from this. We thus above all understand that the novelty of our present lies in the widespread introduction of calculating tools and calculating machines into all aspects of life in society.

    4This approach is clearly accurate, but fails in neglecting a second aspect, related to the first. Computers, calculating machines, are only able to work upon receiving the sustenance that they require. Analysis indicates that this sustenance consists in series of zeros and ones, conveying binary information. But, by virtue of a somewhat obvious coding possibility, we deduce that every symbolic chain of finite length using a finite list of predefined symbols may be translated into binary language, and, in this way, be fed to computers. What, then, is a symbolic chain built using the symbols {+, x, ∆}, for example? I can define the category of these “α chains” in the following manner:

    1. ‘+’ is an α chain;
    2. ‘x’ is an α chain;
    3. ‘∆’ is an α chain;
    4. if C is an α chain ‘C+’ is an α chain;
    5. if C is an α chain ‘C x’ is an α chain;
    6. if C is an α chain ‘C∆’ is an α chain;
    7. an α chain may only be so based on the preceding clauses.

    5Such a definition describes the objects in the category by anticipation, demonstrating how to “build” each one using primitive objects: by successively using certain building rules, an undetermined yet finite number of times, resulting in the emergence of a new object in the category using given objects from the category. This definition is referred to as a recursive definition, defining objects generically as constructions—entities that I construct and whose structure is intuitive to me as I am building them. Luitzen Brouwer originated inquiry into such objects, considering all rightfully mathematical objects as the fruit of this type of building activity (for him, constructions had to emerge in mental space, in fact).

    6To my mind, the full scope of computation encompasses the complicit convergence of calculation and construction. What we refer to as calculating in the sense of computers and the great logic revolution of the 1930s calls for “constructions” in the aforementioned sense in order to function. “Calculations”, as opposed to objects, hold the position of what is known as function or application in mathematics: while every construction is a finite entity resulting from a finite performance rendered in a “tree of construction”, a calculation is an operating principle likely to act on an undetermined entry (a construction) to produce a construction once again as output, in general.

    7Thus, a recursive function will act equally on any list of natural whole ks; thus, a Turing machine calculates according to the arbitrary filling of its tape by a finite symbolic message; thus, a 1-term taken as the indication of a calculation will act on the 1-terms written to its right, in order to produce as output, in general, the irreducible 1-term obtained by performing all substitutions. Calculations are thus general operating systems, “infinite” in the sense that they may involve an arbitrary entry chosen from an infinite array. In this sense, they are completely different from constructions. However, the theory of calculability—its very soul, to some extent—consistently allows for the possibility of perfectly identifying a calculation as a construction: if a calculation is a Turing machine, it is identified by the data from its symbols, its states and its rules, which corresponds to a structured finite vector of semiotic data; if a calculation is a 1-term, it is as such a construction (primitive terms: the variables—construction processes: the multiplication of terms and the 1-abstraction); if a calculation is a recursive function, it is a construction in that it is created from basic functions by the authorized processes (composition, definition by recurrence, minimization). The “infinitary” entities that calculations are thus remain in the grasp of the constructive perspective, in terms of what constitutes their identity. This also means that their action on a constructive object may be anticipated and decomposed into explicit and exact moments. The “output”—inasmuch as it exists—may be constructed every time.

    8The accurate vision of computation, exactly corresponding to the way in which its ingredients are presented in the highly specific phenomenological field that is logic-mathematics, in this case, thus makes it appear as an element or field combining calculation and construction, with their complicity and dependence. This perception of computation is somewhat confirmed by the elementary remark that may be made on the development of the information revolution: it continually calls not only for the invention of new algorithms and new software as well as the installation of these logical forms in ever higher performing machines, but also, for the ever greater translation of the reality that we know into the format of the constructive object. This aspect is often referred to as coding, encompassing the choice of good data structures. On the Internet, I find all of the restaurants likely to interest me with their relevant features, but to be able to do so, it was necessary to think up a way of entering them into the machine as a category of entities. The same goes for directors, movies, TV series, actresses and actors on IMDB: it was necessary to conceive of data structures incorporating information in such a way so as to allow it to be expressed in every which way and to find everything from everything else.

    9There are a number of inquiries to undertake on what is implied by the “coding” in question, the passage to the format of the constructive object, according to the type of entities considered. At times it seems that this translation doesn’t affect or hardly affects the kind of data considered: this is perhaps the case with all that is text- or language-based, insofar as it is originally recorded in such a format (Derrida’s concept of arche-writing acknowledges this assessment). At times, on the contrary, the translation is violent, in principle, altering the message, forgetting part of its determinism: this seems to be the case for visual data, which in principle encompasses continual variation, on both a morphological and chromatic level.

    10In any case, the information revolution adventure underway clearly encompasses the simultaneous and correlative influence of calculation and construction on our modes of action and our types of objects, respectively. To be more precise, on the one hand, “translation” occurs in the sense that calculation and construction formats are found, at least to some extent, in the ways in which a given type of data is treated spontaneously; and on the other hand, beyond this translation, the calculo-constructive version both replaces what came before and is added onto this. Generally, pre-translated real or social components linger, although now, for a portion of usage, they are no longer looked at or used. Thus, images not only exist in digital fashion, in the memories of computational artefact, but possess the status of painted, viewed, sculpted image, built image, image evolving in nature, etc. But we cannot rely upon digitized images for a whole circuit of production and contemplation, for example, when we show one another the visual recordings on our smartphones.

    11This first section aims to identify what is involved in the transformation underway, and to reveal that behind this dual content— calculation and construction, taken in their solidarity—a figure of subjectivity is already present: calculation and construction yield to it, as this figure encompasses the corresponding concepts in their generic programming. The modes of action of calculation and the types of objects of construction are not natural, in reality: they are noemata, in a way, the correlates of a specific intentionality. The computational world is guaranteed as such by a transcendental subjectivity of mathematics, which tends to be forgotten.

    12I would now like to address our relationship to computation— not so much legally determining how it takes on its epistemological status, but examining how, once it has been “reified” in computational machines, it brings us along on an existential ride.

    Our Computational Being

    13In Le monde du computationnel, I sought to describe typical phases in characterizing or encompassing an existence in computation.1 To get at what matters to me here, it is simplest to focus on the final phase, that of web surfing. In terms of browsing on the Internet, what I first and foremost observe is that this is a form of exploration governed by the principle of referencing: typically, I get to a location (with a corresponding URL address), and from there, certain referencing possibilities open up to me, pre-indicated by buttons, zones or words to click on. I thus find myself caught up in a progression that is always identified with the path of a branch in a graph.

    14On an initial level, it is striking to observe that, viewed in this way, online browsing reproduces the pattern of Heidegger’s being-in-the-world: in Being and Time (Sein und Zeit 1927/2010), the first world, that of my activity, is a structured network of references, each of which corresponds to an arrow of completion likely to be fit to my existence. This initial sketched-out description seems to justify the idea that the Web as a whole functions as a world in the phenomenological sense. On the one hand, it seems to point us to a fundamentally standard exercise in terms of our being-in-the-world: from this point of view, it only seems to offer particular graphs of “meaningfulness” (Bedeutsamkeit). On the other hand, if we are more demanding in terms of the concept of world, and likewise, the concept of our existential exploration, the Web even encompasses something like an infinitization of our possible paths. The Web is not a finite, stable and complete graph: new nodes and new references never cease to emerge, little by little, just as, on the one hand, culture—constantly inflating—is poured into the Web, and on the other hand, the latter’s paths are memorized and added as information, i.e., entered into its network in such and such coded form, or via such and such a consequence of this. If we are seeking a desiring being-in-the-world implicitly attracted by the absence of totality, an undefined factor of excess along the axes of infinitization, the Web seems capable of providing satisfaction.

    15But the Web has the power of a world in yet another way: it offers informational fibers to seek out prior to heading to practically any point in the real world. When, during my concrete peregrinations along the paths of the basic world, I draw close to a particular location, I may seek to wade through the content that it offers in anticipation, before my life has use for it, exploring its history and resources, its full extent prior to using it. The Web allows for this, to the extent that every reality is commented and reduplicated on it, so to speak. So that I am able to perceive, the Web contains information and explanations, sites that deploy the depth and richness of what is in question. The Web as a whole functions as an immense information fiber reduplicating the world, as well as acting directly as a “world” (cf. figure 1).

    Fig. 1: The informational fiber

    Image

    16From this point of view, the Web does nothing that the brain doesn’t do, in ordinary uses of life. The complexity of my memories, my knowledge, my references is indeed like a mental treasure that I can seek out at the very least every time I encounter an object or location in the world, before opting for such and such action at this location or in relation to this object. It is as if the Web represented an immense shared mind, alongside our idiosyncratic minds, accessible as they are for the same function of planning actions. The “reduplication of the world” of the Web is thus the convergent constitution of a Geist, reduplicating the function of each mind.

    17This in total makes for three functions for the Web, each of which is related to subjectivity and subjectification. For us, the Web extends the function—subjectifying in decisive manner, according to a certain phenomenology—of the being-in-the-world to a supplementary mode of the world. It provides a reduplication of the world—a vast informational fiber above the world—for subjective exercise, here, more or less understood in its classic, deliberative, suspended (Aristotelian?) figure. It “creates” the objective mind, in the sense of an intersubjective universal recording the margin into the reality of thought. If the first value is applied to the third, it then seems that Web browsing becomes an exploration taking the Geist as world. I feel that this formulation comes close to what many experience, contributing to the popularity and appeal of browsing.

    Etho-Analytical Point of View

    18I would now like to build on what I presented in my 2007 work, Territoires du sens, as the etho-analysis of the subject. A few words of explanation are necessary here. Etho-analysis is the philosophical process—an extension of the phenomenological program, one might say—of studying our collective senses, putting forth the hypothesis that each one of us is based on the reception of a call, carried by a word (the “sollicitant “). Such a reception translates into a practice, referring to an array of instructions expressing what the solicitor requests for a suitable response to be provided to the question (the “sémance” of the concerned sense region). Thus, according to the example treated with greatest detail in the book, the word love is a sollicitant, calling on us to maintain relationships that prove equal to love; this implies attempting to conform to what we recognize deep down, at least if we confront ourselves with our authenticity in this respect, as the imperatives of love. In this case, the sémance of love orders the combination of love and friendship in transcendental manner, or experiencing love as a connection that is everything (penetrating all aspects of living and with no limit in time—Salanskis 2007, 80-103).

    19In the same work, I uphold that behind the word subject, a sollicitant rings out. The word does not designate by extension the whole of those entities that are subjects, but calls out to behave as subjects, to maintain and transmit in our lives the concern of subject creation. Anti-subjectivism has persecuted subjectivist views in philosophy in asserting that the subject had no being, or at least, no substantial and native being, but was merely an effect, an intersection point, a surface. Lacan best expressed this attitude in speaking of the “false evidence in the name of which the subject’s status emerges in a parade of existence” (Lacan 1966, back cover). An etho-analysis of the subject would object that these critiques miss what the subject is all about—an ought, rather than an is.

    20What then, is the sémance of the subject region? In other words, what are the imperatives of subject creation? Here are the results of my etho-analysis:

    1. Subjects are called upon for an identity task: they must assert continuity or consistency across any established sequence of themselves.
    2. Subjects are called upon to express themselves as texts, and to hear subjects in texts, a clause which reveals the very root of what is meant by the word text. In other words: every consistency, every identity claimed by a subject of existence is expressed as text (and therefore, connecting the scattered elements of our subjective history means including a plurality of texts in one overarching text); receiving a subject as such notably requires stretching the lines of consistency of a text that the subject bears and displays; and lastly, taking a set of linguistic expressions as a text means reading within them, beyond their distributional being-there, lines of solidarity and consistency which make them the expression of a localized subject, expressed by the text.
    3. Subjects are called upon to temporalize without responsibility to principle or law with respect to any logic of their past.2
    4. Subjects are called upon to bear the future by anticipating it and shaping it in its structure, a function that I refer to as that of meta-life in that it reduplicates what may be legitimately understood on an initial level as “life”.3
    5. Subjects are called upon to infinitize themselves, in the first, second and third persons.

    21There is unity to these instructions: 2), 3) and 4) are extensions of the modalities of 1). Temporalization based on irresponsibility and meta-life determines the context in which we are to take on the task of identity. The text subject is the obligatory form of expression of identity within such temporality.

    22The clause of irresponsibility in temporalization is clearly a source of complexity, to the extent of appearing as an obstacle, the permanent recapturing of identity. But in fact, the two forms of temporalization—ordered by 3) and 4)—precisely outline the “crazy” concern of the task of identity: on the one hand, it is to resume, retrieve, incorporate into a sense (subsequently expressed and claimed) everything in relation to which, furthermore and simultaneously, personal temporalization is escapement and drifting from law. And furthermore, the project of identity, toward the future, immediately takes on unbearable weight that prevents living, so to speak, replaces it: it places time itself and its sequential structure as our own load, weighted down by the burden of expressing time rather than letting life play out within it as a given time, happy passage through which we flow.

    23We understand that several different philosophies were able to seek to free us from the task of identity, turning us into the happy swimmers in the waters of our own uncertain circumstances. But according to the etho-analytical point of view, this amounts to abandoning the shared sense of subjectivity, breaking with the ancient way of subject creation, listening to others as subjects, and recognizing third parties as subjects.

    24Let us emphasize the last clause of the subjective sémance: to play the subject game, we must make ourselves infinite, receive others as infinite, interpret all subjectivity in the third person on the horizon of the infinite. Whatever the subject takes as the subject of text every time, the way of using the text subject according to the ethos of subjectivity implies that the expression of the subject is always taken partially, as access to the horizon of an infinite discovery, of ever more co-text or context enriching the subjective figure. This imperative for infinitization is to be understood—in Levinasian manner—as resonating with the infinity that amounts to others as the center of ethical intrigue in Totalité et infini (1961), or to the shelf me as the location of ethical oblation in Autrement qu’être (Levinas 1974). On this subject, see Salanskis 2007, 232-245.

    25Now we must simply inquire into whether the information revolution somehow affects the ethos of subjectivity, analyzed in this fashion. In Le monde du computationnel, I propose two observations liable to be connected to this issue.

    26The first one pertains to what I refer to as the calculation of the effect. I uphold that, in our experience of speech, there is the experience of playing with the possibilities opened by the constructive morphology of the sentence—playing that is indexed on the effect on the recipient (Salankis 2011, 163-176). Illusion and mirage, which overtake us all, are believing that truly, we are able to spark off such and such effect on the recipient by properly calculating the utterance that we make (if need be, by taking into account what is known about this particular interlocutor). In extreme versions, we dream that our utterance will spark off the response of love, admiration or compassion, beyond words. I uphold that speaking encompasses this attitude, more or less necessarily: not entering into this perspective of provoked anticipation of the effect means that language has not truly been acquired. Such a perspective is furthermore, in one sense, the (ethically induced) “symmetrization” of the fundamental circumstance of meaning: hearing a message as having sense means taking it as a request, as a request to be received-understood in such and such a manner (this vision of sense is upheld in Salankis 2001, 136-145).

    27In conceiving of my speech as manipulating the other, it is as if I objectivized to my advantage their posture of reception validating my message as sense. It is as if I became the master of their “reception-understanding”, demonstrating that what I am saying to them comes to them as meaning. In Le monde du computationnel, I emphasize the fact that such a calculation does not work. The laws of transition are not strict: we continually have the experience that others react in an entirely different manner from what we expect/anticipate with our words (despite well-known tricks like “fishing for compliments”, which have a limited degree of success). It is wise to abandon these expectations or hopes, but in a sense, we are unable to do so.

    28The second has to do with the effect of words on me. In extremely general fashion, if with my words, I understand myself as expressing a subject of text, and if I call the text that my words have (just) expressed T, upon adding a sentence P, then the event of my text subjectivity is the passage from T to T + P. This passage is either the confirmation-extension of lines of coherence providing the subject of text underway with its features, or it is the break leading to another subject of text: the subject of existence will have used its power of dissidence (its “irresponsibility”).

    29I can reapply these observations to the context of the information revolution. This has led us to imagine the calculation of the effect in algorithmic fashion: isn’t the ulterior motive of this calculation precisely the ability to arrange the manipulative algorithms? Concerning the mention of the passage from T to T + P, the computational environment clearly tends to strengthen the presupposition, inherent to our description, of a discrete time, a time for step by step updating. At any rate, the linguistic view of the subjective matter welcomes the assumption of such a presupposition. But in what machines record of our textual itineraries (think of the little arrow bringing back former states, to a certain degree, in our word processing) and our dialogues (follow a thread in Gmail), discrete time is directly recorded: every transformation or process is always expressed in sequential or arborescent manner.

    30I would now like to bring up a new existential element: that of “email quarrels”. It can easily happen that in an email exchange with someone, thinking that we are constantly expressing ourselves with complicity, coolness and favorable emotional quickness, we bitterly discover that we have pushed the limits of what the other is able to tolerate from us. Something that is normally slumbering in our relationship with the other, in our interactions with them, slides into the words that we type on the keyboard. Quarrels can result from these clashes.

    31Of course, here we encounter the difference between live speech and written dialogue: as Plato taught, in live interaction, I can bring help to what I am saying so that the other will take it in the right way. In the circumstances that I have just mentioned, face-to-face interaction could have helped avoid conflict: prior to expressing the hurtful words, I would have seen that the other was ill at ease, and corrected myself.

    32But if this is the case, email exchange should not differ from epistolary relations. And yet, there is a difference, arising from the presupposition of immediateness, of obvious camaraderie. When we write (or wrote) a letter to someone, we by the same token took measure of the dangers and distance, using our words to seek out someone distant and unpredictable, whose sensibilities we then sought to respect as much as possible. Email conversely encourages the idea or feeling that we are addressing the other in the ubiquity of the Web, cutting through all mediation, notably the distances of all varieties separating us, with this form of address. This dangerous complicit camaraderie thus emerges.

    33But this does not imply a deterministic fatalism. Having gained awareness of the difficulty, in some cases at least, certain individuals write polished emails that resemble old-fashioned letters (one variation that dramatizes this approach involves turning the letter into an attachment; but the continuity of the address and speech is lost, alongside the phatic function and other communication functions).

    34Such elements are part of the impact of the information revolution, or the computational world, on subjectivity, as they affect the way in which subjectivity is woven into its dialogues, and created through its relations with other subjectivities.

    35On a more general level, the information revolution clearly radicalizes our engagement with symbolic ideality in terms of play—an engagement that by definition dates to humanity’s entering into language, and that is therefore as old as historicity itself. This commitment has already undergone substantial radicalization with the rise of printing, and an industry, a business of stored messages that was previously impossible. This extremely old transformation, linked to the so-called “modern” era, makes access to subjects possible based on traces of discourse. It is for example presupposed by Schleiermacher’s circle of grammar and technique: text must be widespread for the emergence of the canonic problem of the divination of a subjectivity behind a text taken as expression.

    36The supplement brought about by the information revolution is, as we have already emphasized, that information which is not immediately symbolic-linguistic, not spontaneously in the format of constructive objectivity, undergoes translation into such and such format. It thus becomes subject to calculations, matter for a game that is emblematic of human madness—madness of sense and of the combination, the calculation-assembly of messages, of the emotional ordeal that they represent. I incessantly play with feeling what I have offered-calculated myself, in every register possible, or with addressing it in dialogues—images, sounds and videos are part of the broadened textuality that I exchange (on Facebook, for example). It will thus be concluded that the information revolution pulls subjectivity toward its typically separate, excessively human exercise. In underlying fashion, it separates it from everything within it that is and remains introduction, anchoring, participation (in nature, in the world). To be more exact, it radicalizes the basic mode of this separation specific to the human-historic experience—the fact that the elements of our belonging to the world themselves are translated, and tend to be considered as pieces of a symbolic game of our existence for us, rather than partners of this existence as pre-symbolic, desirous realities, forces and powers.

    37Lastly, we may wonder what the computational world brings about in terms of the temporalization of the subject.

    38To start off, the information revolution clearly renders the exercise of what I have referred to as irresponsibility formidable. Indeed, the computational world’s measures for seizure mean that everything that I have been, what my freedom has opted for, giving me such and such a face, tends to be increasingly available, stored in the form of the latest digital analysis (even when this entails photos or videos). The subject’s affirmation of their irresponsibility, the reintroduction of their arbitrariness are therefore constantly confronted with an impressive quantity of vestiges testifying to the previous exercise (let us recall that what subjects don’t want to view as a law for themselves is previous irresponsibility). Symmetrically, the task of identity must be expressed as the taking charge of the whole of such and such “embarrassing” record. The possibilities of forgetting that traditionally accompanied the exercise of irresponsibility as basic relationship with the past are therefore diminished. Or, at least, forgetting must now exist beyond and in spite of traces, in a way.

    39On the somewhat “positive” side of things, it can be imagined that the computational era in language use provides possibilities for new “compositions”. To construct the convergence of sense referred to as their identity, in compliance with the task of identity, the subject can “publish” all of their phases in a free composition that is not only discursively and textually linear: a free composition using modes of display, referencing, overload by image and sound, which are those of expression in the computational age. For now, this perspective seems limited in every way, seeming to concern only teenagers in their “pack” connections, and presidential candidates. But the simultaneous accessibility to the whole of the self’s temporal document seems to foretell that the way in which we rewrite and offer ourselves to others will in the long run head in this direction.

    40And as for the futuristic ek-stasy of the time of the subject4? At first glance, it appears unchanged to me: in the surge of the task of identity, we always face the obligation to build the coming time in its very structure, which leads us to live outside of life while at the same time, in many ways, we are merely following the paths of the project. Clearly, the specific modalities of screen and keyboard use may be inserted here: the rhythms and steps of the computational process are those in which we feel we must enlist ourselves. But to be honest, the basic activity of “internet surfing” may also lead to the forgetting of meta-life in the sense that I take it: the risky inhabitation of the pleasure of commuting and growing interested, without plan or project. The very word surf expresses this. In this hypothesis, let us observe, existence regresses below the task of identity, and thus, finds modalities free of the subjective ethos. This corresponds to what former libidinal leftism encourages. Let us note, at any rate, that the computational era is not necessarily in harmony or in sync with the ethos of subjectivity.

    Conclusion

    41How to assess this examination? Firstly, by refusing to globally judge—with the implicit idea of a positive or negative verdict—the fate of subjectivity in the contemporary conditions of the information revolution. Next, by shedding light on two “preliminary” aspects of the matter: the fact that the computational world—as a world of construction and calculation—only appears as such for a certain “transcendental subject”; and the fact that the computational world favors a rather spontaneous version of the being-in-the-world.

    42Everything that may detach us from excessive fears and hopes in terms of the blazing computational present is welcome.

    Notes de bas de page

    1 To recall: the game of programming, potentially with utility, the exploration of programming languages and of functional architecture, the use of information for the public at large and web browsing (Salanskis 2011, 49-86).

    2 In this way, someone who regularly goes to a café can always change their normal order; someone who has recurring and strongly held political opinions can adopt a new position; someone who prefers to eat a particular dish consistently may suddenly define it as abject and inedible. All of these shifts are part of the subject’s enduring right, expressing the arbitrary prince that the subject is.

    3 The example that I provide in Territoires du sens is that of a scene of shopping for drinks in a supermarket, suddenly followed with the exhausting solemnity of a simultaneous futurization by the form and content of the near future (Salanskis 2007, 220-223).

    4 Let us recall that, for the etho-analysis of the subject, the subject has a time consisting of irresponsibility in terms of the past and meta-life in terms of the future, but devoid of present: it is as if the task of identity came in the place of the present, substituting eternity for the present in a way.

    Auteurs

    • Jean-Michel Salanskis

      Professor of Philosophy of Science, Logic and Epistemology at University Paris Ouest Nanterre-La Défense. He has been working in the fields of Philosophy of Mathematics, Phenomenology, Contemporary Philosophy, and about Jewish Tradition. His recent publications include Territoires du sens (2007), Le Monde du computationnel (2011) and Partages du sens (2014).

    • Sara Heft (trad.)
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    1 To recall: the game of programming, potentially with utility, the exploration of programming languages and of functional architecture, the use of information for the public at large and web browsing (Salanskis 2011, 49-86).

    2 In this way, someone who regularly goes to a café can always change their normal order; someone who has recurring and strongly held political opinions can adopt a new position; someone who prefers to eat a particular dish consistently may suddenly define it as abject and inedible. All of these shifts are part of the subject’s enduring right, expressing the arbitrary prince that the subject is.

    3 The example that I provide in Territoires du sens is that of a scene of shopping for drinks in a supermarket, suddenly followed with the exhausting solemnity of a simultaneous futurization by the form and content of the near future (Salanskis 2007, 220-223).

    4 Let us recall that, for the etho-analysis of the subject, the subject has a time consisting of irresponsibility in terms of the past and meta-life in terms of the future, but devoid of present: it is as if the task of identity came in the place of the present, substituting eternity for the present in a way.

    The Digital Subject

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    Salanskis, J.-M. (2017). Computation and Subjectivity (S. Heft, Trad.). In L. Claire, R. Arnaud, C.-N. Pierre, & T. Sara (éds.), The Digital Subject (1‑). Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pupo.30868
    Salanskis, Jean-Michel. « Computation and Subjectivity ». In The Digital Subject, édité par Larsonneur Claire, Regnauld Arnaud, Cassou-Noguès Pierre, et Touiza. Sara, traduit par Sara Heft. Nanterre: Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2017. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pupo.30868.
    Salanskis, Jean-Michel. « Computation and Subjectivity ». The Digital Subject, édité par Larsonneur Claire et al., traduit par Sara Heft, Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2017, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pupo.30868.

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    Claire, L., Arnaud, R., Pierre, C.-N., & Sara, T. (éds.). (2017). The Digital Subject (1‑). Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pupo.30803
    Claire, Larsonneur, Regnauld Arnaud, Cassou-Noguès Pierre, et Touiza. Sara, éd. The Digital Subject. Nanterre: Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2017. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pupo.30803.
    Claire, Larsonneur, et al., éditeurs. The Digital Subject. Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2017, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pupo.30803.
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